Turkish police fire water cannons at protesters in Izmir

Turkish riot police on Tuesday fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse a rally called in the coastal city of Izmir by the ousted opposition leader Ozgur Ozel.

Ozel called the Izmir rally at midday (0900 GMT) as Turkey began preparations to shut down for four days to mark the religious holiday Eid al-Adha, which is also known as the Greater Eid.

Before the rally began, the governorate ordered the closure of the city's central Cumhuriyet Square and deployed a large number of riot police with water cannon trucks to break up the flag-waving crowd, according to Turkish media reports.

"President Ozgur, free Turkey!" they shouted in scenes broadcast live on TV.

The demonstration was moved to a nearby location, where it continued peacefully. Ozel addressed his supporters from a bus and spoke about the tens of thousands of participants in Izmir, a city considered a stronghold of the secular opposition.

Political tensions are escalating in Turkey

The protests in Izmir came just days after police stormed the headquarters of Turkey's main opposition CHP party to take control of the building.

Police stormed the premises using tear gas, and journalists were removed from the building in Ankara.

That marked a violent end to a standoff that had been going on for several hours between members of the Republican Peoples' Party, or CHP, and its new court-appointed leadership.

Tensions had been rising since last week when an appeals court nullified the election of Ozgur Ozel as party chairperson in 2023, suspending him and members of the party's executive board.

The ruling said he should be replaced by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his predecessor, who led the party for 13 years but never won any national elections.

Ozel, who is 51 years old, is one of the few remaining figures within the party to have avoided charges that could land him in detention.

The court ruling was the latest in a string of moves against the CHP, which scored a major political win over President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling AKP party in 2024 local elections.

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko